Biofiction Goes Global: Richard Flanaganâs Wanting, Dickens, and the Lost Child

Catherine Lanone

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Chapter 8 Biofiction Goes Global: Richard Flanaganâs Wanting, Dickens, and the Lost Child

In: Neo-Victorian Biofiction

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Catherine Lanone

Catherine Lanone
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 232â261

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004434356_010

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Abstract

Richard Flanaganâs novel Wanting (2008) mingles biofiction of celebrity figures (John Franklin, his wife Lady Jane, and Charles Dickens) with the biofiction of historically marginalised individuals (Mathinna, the Aboriginal girl whom the Franklins adopted and abandoned when they left Tasmania). Wanting thus blends invention and the archival past to challenge narratives of Tasmanian history from an unusual angle. Revisiting Dickens, the novel indulges in the demystification of the literary icon yet seeks to weave ties with the great tradition through (af)filliative patterns. But this reading suggests that Flanagan also reaches beyond caricature and counterfactual slippage. Embedding Tasmania in a global system of economic oppression, the novel ties together Dickens, Mathinna and Lady Jane as figures of loss. It investigates the past to recover a missing story (Mathinnaâs life), thereby implicitly addressing todayâs concerns with the Stolen Generation.

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Neo-Victorian Biofiction

Reimagining Nineteenth-Century Historical Subjects

Series:Â Neo-Victorian Series, Volume: 6Â andÂ Neo-Victorian Series Online

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004434356

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 04 Sep 2020

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- Literature and Cultural Studies

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Chapter 8 Biofiction Goes Global: Richard Flanaganâs Wanting, Dickens, and the Lost Child

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Reimagining Nineteenth-Century Historical Subjects

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Chapter 8 Biofiction Goes Global: Richard Flanaganâs Wanting, Dickens, and the Lost Child